{"id":938,"date":"2012-10-18T08:47:24","date_gmt":"2012-10-18T08:47:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.efrontlearning.net\/?p=938"},"modified":"2016-05-06T15:44:10","modified_gmt":"2016-05-06T15:44:10","slug":"moodle-and-efront-side-by-side","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.efrontlearning.com\/blog\/2012\/10\/moodle-and-efront-side-by-side.html","title":{"rendered":"Moodle and eFront side-by-side"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

This article has been reposted<\/em> from\u00a0the\u00a0Wyver Solutions blog. The original<\/em> article may be found here: http:\/\/www.wyversolutions.co.uk\/cms\/2012\/10\/02\/moodle-and-efront-side-by-side\/<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

With eFront\u2019s recent string of awards<\/a>, I thought it was about time I took a look at this relative newcomer to the open source Learning Management System market.
\nFor many years, Moodle<\/a> has been most people\u2019s port of call when looking for an open source LMS (or Virtual Learning Environment in the education sector). Yes, there are many others, such as Atutor<\/a>, Dokeos<\/a> and Sakai<\/a>, but they just haven\u2019t had the same impact as Moodle.<\/p>\n

Personally, I\u2019ve developed a love-hate relationship with Moodle. I\u2019ve used it for many projects, from an elearning delivery platform for a local authority, through to a combined elearning and assessment platform used by nearly 45,000 people over the space of 6 months. It is tremendously capable, extremely robust (mostly!), and has been well tested by millions of users worldwide.<\/p>\n

On the downside, though, it has grown to become a little bit of a monster. Each iteration has added further complexity, to meet the needs of different groups, yet without the polish on the user interface that would help to hide that complexity from people that don\u2019t need it.<\/p>\n

By comparison, eFront\u2019s user interface is a delight. It uses a clear, icon driven design, which, somehow doesn\u2019t fall into the trap of many such designs where the icons need interpretation. A lot of thought seems to have gone into keeping the interface consistent across the application.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t make me think<\/h2>\n

That doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s all good. I like to see how far I can get with an application before having to resort to the manual \u2013 to see whether it follows the \u201cDon\u2019t make me think<\/a>\u201d principle. This means that the application designers have to second guess what users are going to want to do next, and provide a route to that place. One of my first actions, after logging in as an administrator, was to try to build a lesson \u2013 which, eventually, I discovered, is only possible once you\u2019ve switched roles to \u201cprofessor\u201d. But, once I got there, the process of designing a lesson was very straightforward, and the division began to make sense.<\/p>\n

Here, though, is one significant difference between Moodle and eFront.<\/p>\n

Moodle\u2019s courses are built from a series of \u201cactivities\u201d (ie. where the student leaves a record of doing something \u2013 usually through some sort of contribution) interspersed with \u201cresources\u201d (items that the student uses to complete the activities).<\/p>\n

eFront\u2019s lessons, however, are built along more traditional lines (cf. Blackboard), whereby a the lesson is built from content-based units, perhaps interspersed with tests. Any other tools, like projects (cd. Moodle assignments) or forums sit outside of the lesson structure. I know this would work for many usage scenarios, but I do prefer Moodle\u2019s flexibility in how to structure the learning experience.<\/p>\n

Flexibility vs Complexity<\/h2>\n

In fact, that\u2019s the key area where Moodle wins out \u2013 its flexibility. But this comes with maturity, and also with a price \u2013 complexity. For example, the roles and permissions structures within Moodle are perhaps the most complete of any application I know. With them you can allow a user to do something in one context, but not in another. But this richness also means that it can become a nightmare trying to work out what has caused a particular behaviour for a particular user. It\u2019s a little like having an overcomplicated set of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), when building a website.<\/p>\n

By comparison, eFront has a simple set of permissions, which are based on the three apparently unchangeable base user types of administrator, professor and student. I can see that working for most situations \u2013 but would get very limiting in others.<\/p>\n

It seems that the eFront designers have taken the 80:20 rule<\/a> to heart. By focussing on the small amount of functionality that the majority of people will use, they\u2019ve built an application that is suitable for most situations, without the massive effort required to make it fit the other 20%.\u00a0eFront\u2019s focus is on formal, content-centric teacher-directed learning experiences \u2013 and it\u2019s very good at it.<\/p>\n

The provided developer documentation shows that a lot of thought has gone into the architecture and security. (Although it\u2019s always worth considering whether an independent security assessment should be performed if you\u2019re going to be storing personal data on any system). The company behind eFront has a clear business model, which is always a plus as it helps to ensure sustainability of the product. And, alongside this, there also appears to be an active user and developer community \u2013 not as large as Moodle\u2019s yet though!<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been looking at the open source edition of eFront only, which does not have all the functionality of the commercial editions, and I\u2019ve also not used eFront yet in a real live situation \u2013 which is where you really start to notice any limitations. But what I\u2019ve seen so far looks extremely impressive.<\/p>\n

There will still be situations where Moodle is the best tool for the job, but I do expect to be seeing a lot more eFront implementations in the near future.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article has been reposted from\u00a0the\u00a0Wyver Solutions blog. The original article may be found here: http:\/\/www.wyversolutions.co.uk\/cms\/2012\/10\/02\/moodle-and-efront-side-by-side\/ With eFront\u2019s recent string of awards, I thought it was about time I took a look at this relative newcomer to the open source Learning Management System market. For many years, Moodle has been most people\u2019s port of call […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59,40],"tags":[44],"class_list":["post-938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-elearning","category-opinion","tag-lms"],"yoast_head":"\nMoodle and eFront side-by-side - eFront Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.efrontlearning.com\/blog\/2012\/10\/moodle-and-efront-side-by-side.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Moodle and eFront side-by-side\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This article has been reposted from\u00a0the\u00a0Wyver Solutions blog. 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